


In the Empty Places

by Galena



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Gen, Potentially Disturbing Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-17
Updated: 2013-04-17
Packaged: 2017-12-08 17:50:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/764238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galena/pseuds/Galena
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whirl's behaviour gets him put in solitary confinement. Rung attempts to help him understand why & receives some much-needed moral support from Skids.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Empty Places

“You had your chance,” said Ultra Magnus, and that was that.

Whirl was in the brig until... well, until _forever_ , as he understood it. In solitary confinement, unable to interact with anyone else who might have the misfortune of displeasing the Duly Appointed Enforcer, nor allowed visitors. He didn't even have a guard, just a camera.

His first reaction was disbelief. Seriously, the brig? By himself? Not only was that completely boring but wasn't it also pretty severe? Magnus had read him a list of charges (he tuned out after the good bits) but since when was it illegal to mess with people and deface property? Okay, since when did minor crimes start garnering majorly boring punishments?

He complained loudly for the first week. He glared and ranted at the camera, sure that he had an audience somewhere, but his threats and taunts brought nothing. The boredom really started to get to him during the second week and his baffled, half-amused ire curdled into the real thing.

Whirl's second reaction was all-out violence. He did as much damage to his cell as he was able, as loudly as he was able. He scored graffiti into the walls with his claws until there was no space left, then started on the ceiling. The recharge slab got turned into crumpled scrap metal. There was an energon dispenser in the cell, programmed to deliver rations on a regular basis. Whirl destroyed it in hopes of conjuring an engineer to repair it; he got tranquilized, it got fixed. Finally, he stopped eating. That didn't last long. It turned out that although Whirl had the fortitude to fling himself against suicidal odds in battle, he didn't have the will to starve himself.

His next reaction was inaction. Several weeks passed, according to Whirl's internal chronometer, in which he did nothing at all. He just sat in his cell and idled. Time was a malleable thing when there was nowhere to be, no one to talk to, and nothing to do. He could stare at the wall for hours, processor going into limited maintenance, leaving him awake but insensate.

Someone must have been watching the monitors because after uncountable days of complete immobility, Rung showed up. Whirl wasn't really sure he was there at first. A hallucination would have been a welcome diversion, but no, this really was his psychiatrist.

Or, not exactly.

“Ultra Magnus decided that you've lost the privilege of treatment temporarily. I don't agree with him but he is technically my commanding officer so... I'm here as a friend.”

Whirl shrugged. He hadn't really expected Rung's psychotherapy to work anyway. “Some friend. Took you two months to get down here.”

“You were forbidden from having visitors for six months. Magnus made this exception for me.” Rung didn't sound like he approved, but Whirl wasn't sure if the disapproval was for himself or for Ultra Magnus. Whirl scooted himself closer to the force-field covering the front of his cell. He craved the feel of someone else's electro-magnetic field on his and though he couldn't sense Rung's through the energy barrier, he remembered the steady, pliant feel of it.

“Six months.” Whirl inched nearer, the energy barrier sending a light zap across his forearm in warning. Whirl ignored it. Over-charging himself against the force-field had gotten boring pretty quick too. “I'm sure this isn't good for me, you know, being stuck in here by myself without anybody to talk to or anything to do,” he told Rung. “Pretty sure this breaks some autonomous rights convention or something.”

“Magnus assures me that it does not,” said Rung, and his mouth pressed into a firm, disapproving line. “I brought you some things.”

Whirl clicked off his vocalizer to suppress a whine of gratitude. Rung put a small package into the transferal slot and pushed it into Whirl's cell. The helicopter managed to restrain himself from instantly attacking his gift, though he probably wasn't fooling Rung. The runt had a hard-coded knack for deciphering body language.

“I have to leave now,” Rung said gently.

Whirl looked up. “You just got here!” he said. “Why'd you come if you were just gonna leave?”

“I've been arguing with Magnus for weeks and he only agreed that I could see you for five minutes to evaluate your condition. I'm sorry.”

“Five minutes? How're you supposed to evaluate anything in five minutes?!”

Rung held up his hands. “Whirl, it was the only way I could get in here. I'll talk to him and I'll come back to see you tomorrow. I promise. I'll be back tomorrow.”

Whirl kicked the wall hard enough to dent both the bulkhead and his pedal stabilizer. “Don't bother!” he snarled, but when Rung disappeared through the outer door, Whirl let out a little whimper. Primus, how pathetic was he? Five minutes of Rung's pity and he was already desperate for another dose.

He scrambled over to the transfer bin and pulled out the gift package. Part of him wanted to crush it, shred everything inside the box, and strew the bits around his cell. It would be ephemeral, but it would be satisfying. Then again, the package might contain something actually interesting.

He opened the gift. Rung had brought him an energon treat, a datapad with various innocuous things to read, some kind of mechanical puzzle, and a hand-held computer game. The desire to destroy all of it rose again, but Whirl really wanted the candy. He batted down his desire to destroy the gifts and unwrapped his treat carefully.

Rung had never seen him eat, but he'd managed to give Whirl something he was capable of enjoying with his limited ingestion system. Whirl everted the thin strip of mesh from his tiny, shuttered intake port and licked experimentally at the treat. This demi-oral system made eating more socially comfortable than ingesting nutrients through an axial intake, but it left him with a binary sense of taste. There was a range of flavours Whirl simply couldn't experience anymore; the rations he had been eating for the past months were utterly tasteless. This treat, though, was fragging delicious. Whirl licked, suddenly sober, and investigated the rest of his present.

In the end, Whirl compromised with himself: he ate the candy, kept the puzzle, and ruined the electronics. He was still carefully dissembling and studying the puzzle the next day when Rung returned.

“I wasn't sure if you would be able to manipulate the parts,” said Rung, pointing to the half-deconstructed puzzle. “But I figured if you didn't like it, it would at least take you a while to destroy completely.”

Whirl abandoned the toy and moved to the front of his cell.

“Yeah, some of the smaller bits are tough to get a grip on,” he mumbled. “So what- what'd Ultra Magnus say?”

Rung settled onto the visitor's bench that had so far gone unused. “He has agreed to let me visit you for one hour a day, every third day, if you want me to. We can discuss anything you like, including, if you wish, continuing your psychotherapy sessions.”

“An hour? That's it?”

“For now. Ultra Magnus also asked me to clarify why he's made these decisions because we agree that you do not fully understand why you've been sentenced.” Rung clasped his hands on his knees. “Whirl, you are incarcerated because you are being _punished_. You are being punished because the things that you've done have been harmful to the ship, to the mission, to individuals on-board, and to relationships between these individuals. You have shown little or no remorse for your actions, and continue to inflict wilful damage. We cannot trust you, Whirl. We cannot depend on you. This is why you are in isolation.”

Whirl said nothing for a few moments. “Is that what you think too, or just what he thinks?”

“Ultra Magnus is in charge of your punishment. I was in charge of evaluating your character.”

“So you don't trust me.”

“No, I don't.”

Whirl sat down by the force-field, on the end of his recharge slab. “This is your fault,” he said, optic contracting to a sharp, angry point.

“No, Whirl, the lesson we are trying to drive home to you is that _this is your fault_. You're in isolation because of what you've done, because we couldn't think of any way to help you that wouldn't endanger some of the crew, and because I've come to the conclusion that you can't be helped until you start acknowledging your own actions.”

Whirl leapt off the slab. “It's waytoo late for that!” His electro-magnetic field pressed against the energy barrier, reacting with fury at Rung's words but equally desperate for contact. He stalked two strides to the other side of the cell, turned on his heel and stomped back. “Yeah, you know there's only one real way to fix this situation, don't you? There's only one way to do it. Get Fort Max down here. He won't even have to hold me, I'll kneel for him.”

He dropped to his knees in demonstration and tapped his cockpit. “Hell, bring Cyclonus in on it. He needs some closure. Let him rip this all off and watch Max shove his gun inside me, right up against my spark, and they can pull the trigger together and be happy because _they_ got what _they_ wanted and you won't have to worry about me anymore and Magnus can-”

“Whirl, _stop_.” Rung stood up abruptly and jabbed a finger at Whirl from the other side of the force-field. “That's the only solution you can think of because you've stopped trying. Well, I haven't.”

“Good for you,” snarled Whirl, “You ain't me. I get a vote. I vote you get Fort Max and his big ol' fusion cannon down here. You remember that gun, don'tcha?”

“Actually, you don't get a vote, Whirl. And neither do I. Magnus decides what happens to you and for the next four months, you're staying in solitary incarceration.”

Whirl stared at him, optic flickering wildly, at Rung's eye level. “Fine,” he said, got to his feet and turned away. “I don't want to talk to you anymore. Leave me alone. Go away.”

It didn't work. Rung tried to talk to him for the rest of the hour but, Whirl ignored him. He was so involved in his own fury that he didn't notice when Rung left. He curled up on the recharge slab and couldn't sleep.

When Rung arrived for his appointed hour, three days later, Whirl was still on the slab, considering trying his hand at self-starvation again.

“How are you?” Rung asked.

Whirl curled up tighter in response.

“Will you talk to me today?”

Whirl ignored him. He ignored Rung the next day too, and the day after that. But it got old fast and he wasn't really angry at Rung, after he thought about it logically. Rung was just reacting to what Whirl showed him.

So the next time the psychiatrist showed up at his cell, Whirl sat up and greeted him quietly.

“Hey.”

“I brought you a present,” said Rung brightly, and opened the transfer bin. Whirl retrieved the package: a fistful of treats, a Rung-sized fistful. Whirl couldn't stop the little trill of joy that escaped his vocalizer.

“I like these,” he mumbled and snuggled up to the force-field to unwrap one of the treats.

“Do you want to talk today?”

“Okay,” Whirl agreed. He licked delicately at the candy, barely visible between the tips of his pincers, and waited for Rung to speak.

“Have you thought about what I said last time, about why you're in here?”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“I'm not mad at you,” Whirl said. He shrugged. “You're just doin' your job. And let's face it, I'm not making it easy for you.”

“You don't make it easy for yourself either, Whirl.” 

Whirl looked at his claws and didn't say anything.

“Cyclonus finally told me how his feud with you started. I'd like to hear about that from you, if you would like to tell me.”

“He told you about... everything?”

Rung crossed one leg over the other. “He told me that he found you in a bunker full of corpses and that you attacked him without provocation. Is there more to that story?”

“Nothing I want to talk about.”

Rung made a note on his data-pad. “Cyclonus said that you told him you 'didn't kill them, you just scraped them off the ground'. Why did you do that?”

“You mean why'd I tell him that or why'd I... have the Sweeps?”

“Tell me why you had the Sweeps.”

Whirl shifted, pulling his legs up onto the slab beneath him. He could lie, he supposed. Not that there was much of a point. “Didn't you figure it out, with all your psycho-data stuff about me and everything?” If Rung could figure out what kind of candy Whirl would like, he could probably figure out why Whirl would nail a bunch of corpses to a wall and mutilate them.

“I'm not trying to figure out why you do things, Whirl. I want you to tell me, from your own perspective, why you do them. Why did you collect the Sweeps?”

How much more damage could he possibly do to his reputation by talking to Rung about his gallery of 'friends'? There had to be a point of diminishing returns- well, diminishing surprises, more like- in Rung's exploration of Whirl's personal history and motivations.

“They were dead,” he said. “Nobody else wanted them.” Whirl examined the treat held gently between his clawtips. “Nobody was gonna come and claim them, so I took 'em. They were useless.” The war was over; what good were dead warriors, anyway? Or living ones, for that matter.

Rung nodded. “Okay. Then what?”

“I found a bunker, you know, a place to keep them. I liked collecting 'em up; wanted to keep them... safe. Then I could look at their eyes, look at their wounds, figure out how they died.” Whirl shrugged. “Always been fascinated by how stuff works inside and you could see a lot of their insides, so I spent a lot of time just... looking at them.” Whirl paused, licking the last of the treat from his claws.

“There was one of 'em, he had a loose chest plate, half off already. So I pulled on it a little, you know, cause it was already broken, and it came off completely. All his innards came pouring out. I've seen a lot of that kind of thing so it didn't bother me but it...” Whirl shrugged. “It felt good. So I started pulling them apart, kind of gently at first. There was no point to be doing it- they were already dead, I mean, they can't get more dead if I took 'em apart- but it felt good. I got the idea to hang some of them up so I could see them better, putting nails and stuff through them. I liked how it felt when I pulled on them once they were nailed up, because they resisted.”

Rung listened quietly, his expression conveying only the intensity of his attention. Whirl retrieved another candy and talked as he unwrapped it.

“The pulling apart and the looking inside sort of just came together, I guess. Sometimes I'd do it slow, like dismantling a machine and just look at all the parts and how they fit together. Sometimes I'd tear 'em up til there was just scraps left and that got to be better than taking them apart slow.” Whirl lapped at the candy. “I started talking to them after a while. It seemed rude not to. If I could figure out how one of 'em died, I'd tell them, or if I was being rough with one, I'd tell him why, like why I was in a bad mood and needed someone to take it out on, or- or just tell them stuff.” He paused, considering the soft lavender colour of the candy. “It was sorta like talking to you,” he mused.

“Whirl,” said Rung, “do you understand that it was inappropriate to do those things to them?”

“Well, it isn't like they're actual people. They're like turbofoxes-”

“I know.”

“And I didn't actually kill any of-”

“I know, Whirl.” Rung stood up.

Whirl half-fell off the slab scrambling to his feet. “Hey, you asked me to talk about it! Come on, you can't just leave-!”

“I'm not leaving, Whirl. I just need to think.” He began to pace slowly. “Do you understand why doing those things was wrong?”

Whirl settled back, watching the little doctor work off his discomfort. “No, not really,” Whirl said. “I get that it's against the rules and most people don't do it but it made me feel better and I wasn't hurting anybody.”

“Maybe not directly, but what was it doing to _you_?”

“I- I don't- no, it helped me think, it gave me clarity. Something to concentrate on that wasn't, y'know, wasn't me or the war or whatever. I guess that's what it did to me.”

Rung stopped directly in front of him. “No, that's what you perceive the action was doing _for_ you. What was it doing _to_ you?”

Whirl shrugged, nestling ever closer to the force-field. If it wasn't up, he could have reached out and touched Rung. “I don't know what you're asking.”

“You described what you were doing as 'desecration',” said Rung, “though you blamed it on Cyclonus. So, you know that what you were doing was disrespectful-”

“I wasn't gonna go start- start killing neutrals or- or Decepticons and taking apart their corpses, or something! They were just Sweeps!”

“Sweeps _look_ like us, Whirl, and just because they don't have the same autonomy doesn't mean their lives are worthless, anymore than a turbo-fox's life is worthless to the turbo-fox. And now you've formed a habit: mutilate and destroy something that shares a physical form with _people_. Do you see why I find this disturbing?”

“But Sweeps aren't _people_ -”

“You didn't answer my question. Do you understand why this bothers me?”

Whirl stared at him thoughtfully for a long moment. “Because you're afraid I'd do that to you?”

Rung took his seat again, shifting forward as though they were having a private conversation rather than one that was probably being recorded. “Maybe, but I'm more afraid that you could rationalize it, like you're rationalizing what you did with the Sweeps. If it makes sense to you, you feel okay doing it.”

“Yeah...” said Whirl, wary. “I know it's against the rules but I wasn't hurting anybody. I wouldn't- I wouldn't treat you like that, Rung. You're my friend.”

Rung's expression was carefully blank. “Okay. I understand. You knew it was wrong and you didn't want to get caught, but you did it anyway because it made you feel good and you could get away with it.”

Whirl made a shallow nod. “Pretty much.”

“Would you do it again, if you knew you wouldn't be discovered?”

Whirl looked away. “Yeah.”

Rung smiled. “Thank you for being honest with me,” he said, and Whirl ducked his head at the praise.

* * *

Rung sat in Swerve's bar, staring into his drink. He couldn't get the image out of his processor: Whirl up to his elbows in the unidentifiable remains of some hapless drone, tugging and ripping and pausing to examine things with simple fascination, probably carrying on a callous discussion with himself over his findings, utterly undeterred by the gore and...

“Whirl?”

Rung turned abruptly and found Skids at his elbow. “I'm sorry?”

“You've been down to see Whirl again,” said the theoretician.

“Yes,” said Rung, returning his attention to his drink.

Skids considered Rung's general disposition and lowered his voice. “That bad?”

“I can't talk about it,” said Rung. Skids nodded and looked away. Rung bared his teeth. “Every now and then, I get a glimpse of... _something_ worthwhile in him,” he whispered. “He's not gone into the emptiness completely. He's just gone far enough that he can't see the way back.”

Skids regarded him thoughtfully. “Even if he can't see the way,” he said, “he can still see _you_. Remember that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Anteater/pangolin-tongue Whirl amuses me.


End file.
